By Alberto Amalfi | @Tennis_Now | Thursday, October 13, 2022
Nick Kyrgios did dirty work at Wimbledon, Stefanos Tsitsipas’ mother said.
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Reflecting on her son’s four-set loss to Kyrgios in the Wimbledon third round, Julia Sergeyevna Apostoli told The Greek City Times the Aussie’s antics got into her son’s head.
“The only person who confuses Stefanos is Nick Kyrgios. He is the only one who brings him out of himself,” Julia Sergeyevna Apostoli told The Greek City Times. “In the Wimbledon match, Kyrgios decided to ignore the general rules of sports. The match became very strange and nervous because he was playing ‘dirty’ tennis.
“Stefanos doesn’t play like that. He completely lost his temper due to the behavior of his opponent and lost the match without being any worse on the court.”
The mercurial Kyrgios rode his massive serve and major mind games to topple fourth-seeded Tsitsipas 6-7(2), 6-4, 6-3, 7-6(7) in a wild, crazy and contentious Clash on Court No. 1.
Both men were hit with code violations as Court No. 1 felt like the octagon at times. Tsitsipas summed up this tennis tempest of sound and flurry as “a circus.”
Tsitsipas called Kyrgios out as a bully in his post-match presser, while Kyrgios claimed Tsitsipas “is not liked.”
“It’s constant bullying, that’s what he does,” Tsitsipas said.
Kyrgios laughed off the bullying charge saying “I did nothing towards Stefanos today that was disrespectful.”
“I don’t know what to say. I’m not sure how I bullied him,” Kyrgios told the media after beating the Greek for the fourth time in five meetings. “He was the one hitting balls at me, he was the one that hit a spectator, he was the one that smacked it out of the stadium. I didn’t do anything.
“I was actually like — apart from me just going back and forth to the umpire for a bit, I did nothing towards Stefanos today that was disrespectful, I don’t think. I was not drilling him with balls.”
Photo credit: Getty
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